


I Didn't Come For Answers (to a place like this)

by BrighteyedJill



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, Suicidal Thoughts, The Witcher 3 Spoilers, Witcher uncle feels, past major character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:08:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27113089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrighteyedJill/pseuds/BrighteyedJill
Summary: Lambert never wanted to be a witcher in the first place, so it's a cruel fucking joke that he's the last of the wolf witchers. At Samhain, he returns to Kaer Morhen to rage against the hopelessly unfair situation.
Relationships: Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Lambert
Comments: 6
Kudos: 77
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	I Didn't Come For Answers (to a place like this)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Whumptober 2020, prompt No. 19 Grief/Mourning a loved one. Thanks to buckybarnesinbootyshorts for beat-ing. This is my penance for Whumptober's Day 16 fic, [Dodge, Parry](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27049231). The title is from Philip Levine's poem [Gospel](https://poets.org/poem/gospel).

Kaer Morhen was an absolutely appropriate place to be miserable. It was a stupid thing for Lambert to do, dragging his ass all the way up here. Days out of his way when there was no coin in it, no supplies even. Well, he supposed he could catch one or two of the goats from the now-wild herd and get some meat so the trip wouldn’t be a total waste. He’d wanted to be miserable. Some of his losses he’d mourned long ago--spent enough time drinking after Aiden was gone to staunch that wound. But this time last year he’d thought he had decades still to visit Geralt in Corvo Bianco and terrorize his butler and drink all his wine. And Eskel was supposed to be there for Lambert to run up against whenever he thought he might get out of control. He was supposed to be a constant, strength like a fucking mountain. 

But everyone left Lambert behind. Everyone. His father gave Lambert away. His mother died before he could come back for her. Aiden was taken unfairly early. Vesemir gave his life to save Ciri. Geralt died once, came back, and had the audacity to die a second time. Eskel hadn’t lived long after that. A fact for which Lambert still hasn’t forgiven him. Yeah, ok, Eskel had been a fucking wreck after Geralt died the first time, so Lambert probably should have seen it coming. But it still stung that Lambert on his own wasn’t enough for Eskel to stick around for. 

Kaer Morhen was just as depressing and miserable as Lambert thought it would be. When he rode through the gates, he saw the weeds pushing up through the cobblestones, the hole in the north wall crumbling worse than ever, the silence of it all. Perfect. Lambert led his horse into the stable and found a stall with enough solid roof above it that she’d be safe there. She hadn’t died on Lambert yet, so she deserved a nice rub down and some food before he did what he came here to do.

Samhain was a stupid holiday. If people wanted bonfires, they should build them when the people actually died so their corpses didn’t attract necrophages, not just to be a pretty place to sit around and drink and make people sound nicer and nobler than they really were. Nevertheless, Lambert was going to celebrate. He looted a reasonably intact bench from the large hall inside. Then he set about dragging fallen branches and fallen bits of wooden scaffold and pieces of what used to be a cart, piling them in the center of the courtyard. At sunset, he lit it up with Igni. He threw himself down on the bench and sat there staring into the flames and sipping one of the many fine bottles of spirits he’d liberated from the cellars, brewed himself over winters long past. 

Lambert always felt ghosts at Kaer Morhen. Not proper wraiths. But the energy of the dead suffused this place. So many had died here even before the attack. The dead whispered in the wind blowing through empty corners. They sang in the mournful voices of the wolves at night. They pounded out their rage in the spring torrents and winter storms that were slowly tearing this place down.

On this night, when the veil between the living and the dead was supposedly thinnest, Lambert could almost believe he heard them in truth. His dead family. The boys in his cohort who didn’t make it: Micha and Voltehre and the others. The instructors, some of whom hadn’t been total dicks. There’d been master Goran, who’d always been willing to give a boy an extra roll or an end of bread in those hungry days of growing pains when nothing seemed like enough. He’d died in the pogrom. Vesemir, whose fault it was that Lambert had this shit life in the first place, had even so been twice the father Lambert’s real dad had been: yelling at him over his footwork and his defence, and once in a while giving him a nod of approval that made Lambert’s heart light up like a fucking pyre. Geralt, pretty boy, Mr. Fucking Destiny, but when Lambert was at his worst, Geralt would give him an intense, serious look, and ask him about it, and expect an answer. Eskel, who once came out in a winter storm to drag an extremely drunk Lambert inside and let him scream in his face rather than stay outside and rage at the wind in sub-zero weather. Eskel, who’d known, had fucking known he was leaving Lambert to be the last. 

“Fuck you, fuck all of you for leaving me here.” Lambert surged to his feet and threw the bottle into the flames, where it blazed brightly for a moment. “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!”

Lambert collapsed, dropping onto his knees on the stones scattered with dead leaves. What had he fucking expected, coming here? Why would this place bring him anything but pain?

There was a familiar sound and a flash of light from the other side of the bonfire. Lambert reached for his sword as he looked up, then saw the ash-white hair framing a familiar face.

“Oh. Witcher-girl. It’s just you.” Lambert sat back on his heels and scrubbed his arm over his face, hoping she didn’t notice the streaks of tears across his cheeks. 

“Happy Samhain, Lambert.” Ciri stepped around the fire. She wore a fur-lined cloak and a dress in black and gold that looked sturdy enough to fight in. Her eyes darted to the significant supply of bottles on the ground next to Lambert, most of which were still full. “I was hoping I might find you here. You haven’t been very easy to track down this past year.”

“Why would you want--Oh.” Lambert laughed hoarsely. “Is it a security risk to have the Empress’s fuck-up uncle roaming the countryside alone?”

“No,” Ciri said. “I’d destroy anyone who tried to hurt you, so there’s no security risk. Anyway, I brought you something.”

Lambert staggered to his feet. Ciri held out her hand, and Lambert reached out to take what she offered. It was a medallion in the shape of a wolf’s head, warm from her skin. 

Lambert’s hand closed around it automatically. “Ciri--”

“It’s Eskel’s. I went to get it from the rockslide. Well, I sent a detachment of soldiers to sort through the rockslide until they found it… and him.” Ciri lowered herself onto the bench and looked at the fire. “I tried to find you, when we burned the body.”

“Didn’t want to be found.” Lambert had heard the news, though not all the details, and he’d been so fucking furious that he’d taken contract after contract until he was so exhausted he didn’t have to think or feel. He was profoundly glad Ciri hadn’t been able to track him down then. Lambert reached down to grab a fresh bottle from the supply. He pulled the cork with his teeth and held it out. “Drink?”

“Is this something you brewed?” Ciri asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Yep,” Lambert said, popping the p at the end of the word. 

“Well then definitely.”

Lambert passed her the bottle, then sat next to her on the bench. Ciri made a horrified noise on her first sip of the moonshine. But when Lambert reached for it, she held it out of his reach until she stopped coughing. Then she took another sip. This time she nodded her satisfaction, and took several generous gulps before passing the bottle back to Lambert. They sat together for a while, staring into the fire and taking turns choking down the awful spirits--not Lambert’s best effort, which explained why they hadn’t been drunk before now. 

Lambert was feeling warm and a bit fuzzy from the alcohol and the fire’s glow and Ciri’s shoulder against his. Perhaps that’s why he said, “It’s too bad. Though I suppose it also fits.”

“What?” Ciri asked.

“So many of them wanted this life, wanted to save people, help people, whatever.” Lambert waved the bottle at the fire. “I never wanted to be a witcher. Still don’t. And yet, I’m the last Wolf.”

“Do I not count?” Ciri crossed her arms and looked at Lambert with her chin raised, and Lambert blinked hard for a second as he saw so much of the girl she’d been in the expression.

“Why would you want to?” he asked.

“You trained me. All of you. I’m the youngest Wolf trained at Kaer Morhen, not you,” she said, brandishing a finger at him. “And I’d appreciate not being the only Wolf. Who else am I going to come to for advice on improvising bomb ingredients? Who else can I swap complaints with about the pendulum or the comb or the Killer? Who else will tell me stories about growing up here? Who else can I talk to about…” Tears slid down her cheeks as she wrapped her arms around herself. 

Gods, Lambert was a stupid, selfish fuck. “Ciri. Come here.” He reached over and pulled Ciri into his arms. She cried against his chest, mostly silent but with occasional sobs wracking her body. 

“I miss them, Lambert,” she said at last, barely loud enough to be heard over the crackling fire. “I miss them so much.”

“Me too,” Lambert said. And he did. He even missed Vesemir. What he wouldn’t give to hear Vesemir scold him for his footwork in a practice bout. Or have Geralt laugh at him after kicking his ass at Gwent. Or listen to one of Eskel’s truly stupid puns. And he’d had them for decades. Ciri had had them in her life so briefly, it wasn’t fair. “Ciri?”

She pulled back to look up at him, her luminous green eyes as wide as when she’d been a girl here, but sharper now.

“You have me,” he said, looking at her so she’d know he meant it, and wasn’t just bullshitting her. “It’s a shitty consolation prize, I know. But I’m not… I promise not to go anywhere. You won’t have to be the last one.”

“Witchers don’t get to choose when they go,” Ciri said, shaking her head. “Eskel didn’t. He didn’t, Lambert.”

Lambert nodded. He knew that. Really, he did. He shouldn’t be angry at Eskel, but if he wasn’t angry, he’d have to be something else, and that wouldn’t do. Lambert dredged up a smirk. It didn’t feel too hard to do with Ciri in front of him, obviously needing a bit of fucking humor in her life. “I’m too stubborn. If death comes for me, I’ll tell her to fuck off.”

“Good.” The suggestion of a smile bloomed on Ciri’s face. "You’d better.” She shoved Lambert in the shoulder. He grabbed her wrist and twisted as she laughed at him and countered, eeling out of his grasp. They fought a few more seconds, with Lambert holding the bottle in one hand and trying not to spill it, until Ciri teleported out of range.

“Cheating!” Lambert shouted. 

“There’s no such thing as a fair fight. You taught me that,” Ciri said, and stuck out her tongue. 

Lambert stuck out his tongue back. He threw himself back down on the bench feeling significantly lighter. Ciri sat down next to him again and took the bottle. 

“Don’t you have Empress stuff to do?” Lambert asked eventually.

“It’ll wait,” Ciri said. “What’re they gonna do, fire me?”

“I’m a bad influence,” Lambert muttered, taking another swig. Next to him, Ciri grinned, and that in itself made him glad he’d come all the way up here for a stupid holiday.


End file.
